“They built a user interface that is very easy to use and very easy to trade,” says Sheel Mohnot, a venture capitalist who funds early stage companies. It was a devastating reputational blow for the fast-growing app which has been eyeing its own stock market debut and has quickly picked up 13 million users.įounded by Baiju Bhatt and Vladimir Tenev, who grew disillusioned with Wall Street, the company has always claimed to be focused on the 'have nots' of the world. The pair, who met as students in Stanford University, have often said they took inspiration from the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011.Īs its name suggests, the app allows anyone with a bank account to buy a piece of a publicly traded company. That ease of trading combined with the popularity of forums where young, first-time traders can discuss where to hedge their bets, helped make it synonymous with amateur trading. “This is a serious matter,' Cortez wrote on Twitter. 'Committee investigators should examine any retail services freezing stock purchases in the course of potential investigations - especially those allowing sales, but freezing purchases.' It was a fury that encompassed even the most unlikely of bedfellows: Republican senator Ted Cruz and Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Reddit users have posted screenshots showing they have made tens of thousands on hyperactive stocks such as GameStop with its help.īut now politicians and retail investors are accusing the company of market manipulation after it stopped all its users from snapping up 13 stocks - including GameStop, BlackBerry, Nokia and AMC - for a full day’s trading, while hedge funds could freely buy and sell as they saw fit. In recent days, the trading app has become the most-downloaded in the US. With its easy-to-use interface, lack of fees and promises of democratising finance, Robinhood has become the go-to stock trading app for millennials, amassing a valuation of more than $11bn (£8bn).

What is robinhood app